The Legend of Mitch Blood Green and Other Boxing Essays - by Charles Farrell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Charles Farrell's many personal encounters, questions, insights, and experiences as an observer of the sport... add a multifaceted richness to [this] essay collection.... Readers will find its vibrant psychological, social, political, and personal revelations are just the ticket for a read that is solid in its facts, unexpected in its focus and connections, and thoroughly delightful in its novel approach to boxing."-Midwest Book Review

Mitch "Blood" Green had
more things going for him to make big money in boxing than nearly any fighter
in history. A six-foot-six, 225-pound heavyweight with a chiseled physique and
a traffic-stopping look, Green had ironclad street credibility--he was the gang leader
of the Black Spades--and four New York Golden Gloves heavyweight titles.

But his penchant for
mayhem, drugs, and chaos, while keeping him in the news, torpedoed his pro boxing
career. He lost a high-profile decision to Mike Tyson at Madison Square Garden,
got into a tabloid-grabbing late-night street fight with Tyson at an
after-hours boutique in Harlem, and then disappeared.

Until Charles Farrell
found him.

In The Legend of Mitch "Blood" Green and Other Boxing Essays, Farrell captures life in the boxing
business from its deepest interior, and offers additional portraits of characters
as wide-ranging as Donald Trump, Floyd Patterson, Bert Cooper, Charley Burley, Peter
McNeeley, and Muhammad Ali. Trenchant, fearless, and often flat-out funny, there has never
been a boxing book like this, and there will never be another.

Review Quotes

"Charles Farrell is that rare insider who can write as beautifully about the ugly side of sport as he can about boxing itself. No-nonsense honesty combined with wonderful turns of phrase."-All Sports Book Reviews

"Wow. A story everyone in the fight game can relate to, and a story everyone who thinks they know the fight game should read. This is a real dive into the dreams, hopes, insanity, and business of the Wild West of all professional sports--boxing!"--John Lepak, COO, KRONK

"Some people know the fight game, and some people know how to write. Charles Farrell is one of the only people in America who truly knows both. That's why he's my favorite boxing writer. Read this book and he'll be yours, too."--Hamilton Nolan, writer for The Guardian and author of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

"Mitch 'Blood' Green is a legend in the streets of New York City, one whose roller-coaster life is referenced so often in hip-hop that some contemporary fans might mistakenly assume it was he, not Mike Tyson, who reigned as heavyweight champion."--Todd D. Snyder, author of Beatboxing: How Hip-Hop Changed the Fight Game and Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype

"With his trademark insider acuity, unsentimental compassion, and faultless eye and ear, Charles Farrell gives us an indelible portrait of one of boxing's great characters and a definitive account of what happens when talent runs afoul of the way things work in the world."--Carlo Rotella, contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights

"Charles Farrell is certainly, without question, among the greatest boxing writers of all time-- not merely because of his unique and unmatched experience in the dark underbelly of boxing, but because of his intellect, his craft (he is an artist, first) and his honesty. Charles is not always right--no one is, not about boxing--but he is often brilliant, and always unflinchingly honest about the essentials, the essence. He educates and elucidates and pulls back the curtain on a world slightly more real than reality. In the litmus test for a great writer, I'm smarter, wiser, better, for having read him."--Sam Sheridan, film producer and author of A Fighter's Heart and The Fighter's Mind

"On boxing, Charles Farrell is the best writer we have. I learned this many moons ago when I read my first Farrell piece and he has only gotten better. So what's the secret sauce? Near as I can figure: (a) command of the subject, (b) lucid prose, (c) unique insights into an opaque and exploitive world, a world most fans never see. Also, he's funny. Really funny. To label Farrell a 'boxing writer, ' however, would be an injustice. He's a writer, a remarkable one, and his sensibility is equally revelatory and readable about music, politics, and what A. J. Liebling lovingly dubbed 'the low life.' These essays all feature boxing but it would be a mistake to think that's all they address. Rather, they are concerned with marginal people who live in extremity from choice and need, and suffer because of it. Farrell's clear-eyed compassion for fighters might be the reason he didn't get rich off boxing but it also is a big part of why his work will endure."--Robert

About the Author

Charles Farrell has spent his professional life moving between music and boxing, with occasional detours. He has managed five world champions, and has played and recorded with many of the musicians he most admires--Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman among them. His first book, (Low)life: A Memoir of Jazz, FIght-Fixing, and the Mob, was published by Hamilcar in 2021. Farrell lives outside of Boston.